playing back SACDs

Are you able to play the SACDs through the TV with the ARC disconnected?

SACDs have a very stringent form of copy protection and require the TV to play / pass through, it involves a “chip” in the TV and very few have it. Some AV receivers do but it’s not a format Sonos supports.

Back in the day you would buy a SACD / DVD-A player that had a bunch of analogue outputs and these were then fed into an AV amplifier. 

Thanks very much, GuitarSuperstar. I tried your suggestion re settings, but without success, unfortunately. 

Yes. But the sound is not as good as that produced by the Arc, obviously. 

Deleted….misunderstood the comment. 

I’d guess you are going to have to dig in the TV documents to see what it does with the SACD signal. Both how it is switched.sent internally plus any format changes.

Maybe a look at the SACD manual to see what format it outputs in CD and SACD modes.

Might be fun to plug the SACD into the ARC directly and see what happens. Use the Sonos HDMI cable.

Plugging directly into the Arc wouldn’t work, unless the SACD player is putting out an HDMI ARC signal. 

Isn’t the HDMI-ARC only needed for Atmos? (No.)

Looking further...

https://support.sonos.com/en-us/article/supported-home-theater-audio-formats

• Dolby Atmos*
• Dolby TrueHD*
• Dolby Atmos (True HD)*
• Multichannel PCM*
• Dolby Multichannel PCM*

*Requires an eARC connection

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No ARC:

• Stereo PCM
• Dolby Digital
• DTS (S2 only)
• Dolby Digital Plus
• Dolby Atmos (Dolby Digital Plus)

No. The receiving port in any Sonos is an ARC connection, it is looking for data only on the ARC pin outs. Try it yourself.